


Lost the Game, I Can't Get Lower

by Thefandomsaretakingovermylife



Series: Art [3]
Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Dean is mentioned but only briefly because I can't stand that guy, F/M, Light Angst, Past unresolved feelings on Beth's part, Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-27 00:29:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20398690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thefandomsaretakingovermylife/pseuds/Thefandomsaretakingovermylife
Summary: She thinks she’s going crazy. He’s having a field day with her emotions yet she can’t seem to stop thinking about him. Maybe the boy with a gunshot wound on her daughter’s bed is the perfect excuse to see him.





	Lost the Game, I Can't Get Lower

**Author's Note:**

> Highly recommended that you read the first two parts before this because I should have made it one story and not a series but oh well. Too late now.

“Where the fuck is he?!”

Beth had dragged Ruby down the stairs into the living room the second her friend started to yell at her in a hushed tone.

This wasn’t what she meant when she said she wanted back in. She thought he would make her do a few more Canada trips to Big Mike or maybe she could be talked into becoming the friendly neighborhood drug dealer but she was in no way prepared for what she came home to after picking up her kids from school. And to make matters worse, Emma had been the one to find the issue.

“I have no fucking clue!”

“He can’t just dump a gun shot victim onto your daughter’s bed and expect us to look after him for who knows how long. Should have dropped that kid off at his mom’s since he calls her so much. God, what if the people who did that are after him?”

What if they were after him? Could she defend herself? What about her friends? Or her children? She doesn’t know how to shoot a gun, hand to hand combat seems to require more coordination then she possesses and escaping just to spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder doesn’t seem like the smart choice in the world.

She’ll have to talk to Rio about that. See if he can find her a way to keep her head attached to her body.

“Look, we will figure something out. We’re smart people. We got this.”

“You sure about that? Because there is a guy laying unconscious, in a pool of blood, because he HAS A GUNSHOT WOUND like five feet away from us. This is all your fault. You just had to go and ask for another job! Didn’t think about what that meant for the rest of us, did you? Did you know that I haven’t gotten a full night’s sleep since we drowned that car, that I keep having nightmares where I shoot Big Mike, but this time it’s not his foot, it’s his heart? Do you even care?”

“Rubes, of course, I care. You know I do. You don’t have to be here. I told him I was coming back. Never even mentioned you or Annie. If you want out, the door is right over there. You don’t need to be dragged down with me if you don’t want to be.”

“Too little too late. I’ve seen the guy. I was at the scene of the crime. I’m an accomplice now.”

“I doubt the cops or anyone is gonna think to look for a gangbanger in the suburbs but if anyone does, I won’t tell them you were here. Here’s your out now. I may be in too deep, but it’s not too late for you.”

“Well, it’s not like I’m just going to leave you here with Annie to care for a dude on his deathbed.”

“He’s not his deathbed. He’ll be fine.”

“It’s close enough to his deathbed. He’s lost so much blood, I’m surprised he still has any left.”

They were both angry. Ruby doesn’t belong in the criminal world and being in that world is all Beth can think about. It’s calling her name. Doing these jobs, it’s like Rio is a siren singing his song, luring her to her death. Possibly quite literally. And maybe that’s why she kinda likes it, because of that excitement she gets when she feels like she is straddling the line between life and death.

Plus, with time, maybe the company she keeps will grow on her. 

But this life, coming home to bloody surprises and smuggling money across borders, it isn’t what Ruby wants. She doesn’t deserve to be feeling this way because of Beth. She just can’t justify living this kind of life.

“You know it’s different for me, true?”

“Why? Because you get some weird perverse thrill from breaking the law?”

“No. Because of who is telling us to break the law.”

“Oh, right. The soulmate bond. You know it’s crazy, right? The housewife and the gangbanger. The universe has a sick sense of humor.”

“Don’t I know it. But you know, he wasn’t always like this.”

“What?” Ruby looked over at her best friend with wide eyes and raised eyebrows. The universal sign for confusion.

“I never told you this. I never told anyone this. But after you went home that day, you know, when we first found the mark on my wrist, we started writing to each other. It was just like little notes of encouragement like ‘have a nice day’ or ‘thinking about you’ or ‘it’ll be fine. At least you have me’. He used to be sweet and kind. Or maybe I just read his notes that way because that who I wanted him to be.”

“Well, he was younger back then. Maybe something happened to him that made him all tough and you know…murderous.”

“Maybe. Or maybe something happened to make him drop the act.”

“So that’s the whole reason you’re staying? Because you feel like you owe it to him because you're soulmates?”

“YOU HAVE A SOULMATE?!”

Fuck.

She forgot Annie was still upstairs with the guy.

“Wanna say that a little louder? I don’t think Big Mike and his guys in Canada heard you.”

“How could you not have told me?! You were the first person I told when I found mine! How long have you known?”

“Ummm…like…twenty-two years.”

Silence erupted. Pure silence. The kind where a pin could drop on the other side of the house and she could have heard it loud and clear type of silence.

Shit.

She messed up. Big time.

“I’m sorry. It sounded like you said you have known about your universe-given perfect match for twenty-two years and just didn’t tell me.”

“When I found out you were five years old. You barely knew how to read let alone understand the concept of soulmates. By the time you started getting curious about them, I had already had my marks for like five or six years and it was too late. I was twenty and you thought they were never going to appear. I thought it was easier to just keep covering them, for both of our sakes.”

“Why? Would it really have been so hard to say, ‘Hey little sis, just thought I’d let you know, my marks appeared so if you see me with tattoos, don’t be alarmed”?

“Actually yeah. It would have been hard. Out of all those years, I spent 17 of them trying to forget about him.”

“Why? I would’ve hunted him down right then and there.”

“Trust me, I thought about it. But he broke my fucking heart, so I decided to cut my losses.”

Annie sat down next to her sister but slighted twisted her body so she could see Ruby on the loveseat across from her.

“Did you know about this, Rubes?”

“Nah. I knew about the dude but not like any details.”

Annie eagerly pulled Beth’s hand into her lap and leaned forward as if they were pre-teens and were about to tell each other their deepest darkest secrets.

“I will forget that you never told me and I will totally forgive you for deceiving me for years if you spill every single little detail right now.”

“Right now? Like this very second? There’s a lot to unpack and it’s complicated and I don’t really wanna get into it.”

“No, just like, whenever you got the time. YES, RIGHT NOW!”

So, she told her sister and her best friend everything. About her first mark and they had started talking to each other and leaving each other notes for years. How when she was twenty and he was 18, he told her to call him just to tell her he was getting married to someone who wasn’t her. About every single tattoo that now litters her body.

She spared no detail and by the end, her eyes were glossed over with tears threatening to spill over onto her cheeks. But she refused to let them. There was no way she was going to give him the satisfaction of her crying over him now.

“So how many tats you got now?”

“13, I think. I count all the bars as one but then I got like a handful on my shoulders and some more on my forearms. Thankfully, there’s none on my legs. I think he’s saving that for me to put some artwork.”

“Can I see them? Is that okay to ask?”

“Yeah, it’s fine as long as you’re prepared. It’s a lot at first.”

Beth repeated her action as she did to Ruby and took Annie by her hand and led her into her bathroom where she meticulously and robotically removed the stifling layer of foundation and concealer to reveal the large bird and slowly peeled off her black long sleeve sweater to put out on display the smattering of other pieces of ink.

“Damn, B. No wonder you like the criminal underworld. You’re practically a master of disguise and deception. And the tats make it look like you belong in a gang.”

“Yeah, about that…”

“Wait, why does that one look familiar?” Annie rose her hand to point at the eagle. “Man, I swear I’ve seen it before.”

“Yeah, that’s because you have.”

On second thought, maybe Ruby does belong in the criminal world. She’s got throwing Beth under the bus down cold.

“We know him?”

“Yeah, Annie. We do. And he should be here any second to tell us what the hell we’re supposed to be doing with this buddy of his on my daughter’s bed. I told you it was complicated.”

******************************************************************************************************************************************

“Oh my god. You brought a gun? Of course, you brought a gun.”

She observed Rio standing at her dresser, a framed picture in his hand, studying it intently. She read some tension in his face, but as soon as it appeared, it left again. If she wasn’t so frazzled, she would have thought it was jealousy.

“This is your husband?”

“Yes.”

“What’s he do?”

“He sells cars.”

“Is he good at it?”

“Yeah. I…What? Why does that matter?”

“Yeah, he don’t look too trustworthy to me.”

Beth couldn’t help but think that’s because he isn’t trustworthy. The man cheated on her with who knows how many women. It doesn’t really get much more untrustworthy than that.

And why the sudden inquisition? Was he stalling or just trying to rile her up and make her angry? If the latter was the goal, then he sure was on the right path.

“What do you want?”

She watched as he trailed his eyes over her entire body. God, it shouldn’t feel this way. It should not make her knees weak to see him smirk as he drank in her appearance and it should not feel like electricity was coursing through them without the pair even touching. ‘

She wished it was easier to ignore how he made her feel just by being in the same room as her.

She wished the feeling would never stop. It made her feel wanted, a feeling that was long ago forgotten and was just itching to be resurfaced.

“I came to pick up my boy.”

“That’s hilarious. He’s not here. And by the way, when he left, he held me at gunpoint and then stole my car. So, I’m gonna need payment for that, too.”

He had to know he wasn’t there. It’s not like he would just leave without telling his boss where he was going. And it’s not like she was going to fight to keep him in her house with her kids roaming around and asking questions. Questions she didn’t have answers to and the answers she did have were most definitely not kid-appropriate.

If he knew that the boy had left, then maybe he had come by just to see her. Maybe he feels the electricity too.

“Oh, I’m sorry. What payment?”

“Excuse me?”

“Yeah, you get paid when you do a job. Did you do a job?”

She knew it was too good to be true; him wanting to see her just as much as she wanted to see him. The only reason she is in this situation is that she felt like she owed herself to see if there was something between the two of them or if the years they spent apart caused too much damage. How could she do that when he keeps giving her whiplash with how fast his attitude and feelings change? One moment, she felt like she was the only thing he could see and then the next, it felt like he was trying to block her out of his vision.

It hurt, to say the least.

It killed her to say the most.

“He left.”

“Then that’s on you.”

“What am I supposed to do, chain him to a bed?”

“Oh, baby, what you think this is? Little League? And you get a trophy just for playing?”

“No, but I do think this a game. You showing up all of a sudden, worming your way into my life. Making me question everything about myself. I think you’re making it a game in your head and the prize is making me go off the deep end. And I am trying so hard to not lose.”

“Lose what?”

“I’m sorry?”

“What would you be losing? The game…your family…your freedom…me? Which is it?”

“All four, I guess. Throw in my sanity and you got a perfect storm of confusing emotions.”

“Well, in that case…I don’t give a damn if you try. You gotta win, mama. Can’t have you going crazy and losing that lovely mind, now can we?”

She thinks that’s the closest thing to a compliment he’s ever said to her.

She can’t keep up with him. He almost just ripped off her head for letting his boy walk out the door. Now, he’s only a few inches away from her face. They are so close together. If she concentrated, she could feel their breath intermingling in the small space between them. She shouldn’t, because there is a party downstairs in her backyard filled with her family. neighborhood kids, and their parents, but she so desperately wants to grab the collar of his shirt and pull him even closer until they are flush against each other and their lips only millimeters apart.

But she doesn’t.

Beth can hear footsteps coming closer and the last thing she wants is to explain to another person just who he is to her.

She lost the game already.

She lost her mind the second she saw him.

And dammit if it's not the best feeling in the world.

***************************************************************************************************************************

“You wanna clean fake cash here?”

Beth had to mentally stop herself from rolling her eyes at him. Of course, they wanted to work out of Cloud 9. What other reason would they have to bring him there? Brunch? It’s the perfect plan with minimal risk of getting caught. She’s still pretty proud she thought of the idea.

“Or any big box retailer. You know, Walmart, Costco. They have very generous return policies.”

“And no one thinks twice about a wife buying her husband a flat screen TV or new tires for the minivan.”

“We trade it all in for fresh cash.”

“Fake money out, real money in.”

He wouldn’t know it just by listening to them, but they spent hours working on that sales pitch. Going over it again and again and again until they got all the kinks out and seemed like they weren’t terrified he was going to shoot them then and there if he didn’t like the idea. They worked as if they had something to prove. Or at least Beth did. Because she does.

To him.

She needs to prove that she can survive in this world he created for himself. If she wanted to see if they had anything between them besides some cosmic bond bullshit, then she would work twice as hard as she had ever before in her life to show him he wasn’t making a mistake in giving her a new job, in taking a chance on her.

And now that Ruby and Annie know who he is, they’re honestly more terrified of him then before they knew he was Beth’s soulmate. Earlier he just had the ability to take their lives, which, they hope, would be quick and painless. Now he has the chance to break Beth down in more ways than one. A process that would be long and painful and filled with a difficult road to recovery.

He already broke her heart once. They would be damned if they let him do it again.

“Y’all got it all figured out, huh? What’s in it for you?”

“Twenty percent cut of the profit.”

“Oh, is that right? Anything else while we’re at it? Y’all want health care? Union breaks?”

The three of them decided to let Beth handle any and all negotiations with Rio for obvious reasons. Beth may be in this because of him, but Annie and Ruby were in this for the money and Beth was the most likely out of all of them to swindle him out of a higher cut.

“Just for the record, I’ll never smuggle anything up my butt.”

“I could be talked into it if the compensation was appropriate.”

It’s moments like these where Beth wonders if there will ever be a work day where she doesn’t want to cause her best friend and sister serious physical harm. And by the look on his face, Rio had the same thought. Great minds think alike, and in this case, great minds are tired of people making fools of themselves.

“Are you in, or…”

He gave a single shrug and a little head nod. That was as good as it was gonna get.

“We’ll give it a try.”

“We’re not here to try. We’re here to win, bitch.”

God, she thought she was about to die for a second. But a smile came over his face and she can tell he knew what she was doing.

She’s playing the game.

She’s got everything to lose, but if she plays her cards right, she also has everything to win.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> I wanted to get the next part out quickly because I start my last semester of college soon and I'll have less free time to write which means that it's going to take longer to get out chapters. My goal is to get one or two chapters out per week. 
> 
> The title is from Two Feet's 'Lost the Game' and the series title is based on Sean Grandillo's song 'Art'.


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